Man with $40M estate dies without will

Holocaust survivor, 97, contemplated writing will 2 weeks before death

The state of New York may get a Holocaust survivor's $40 million fortune after the man died without a will or any apparent survivors.Roman Blum was 97 when he died in January 2012. His early life is a mystery -- his exact birthdate is in dispute, and he may have had a wife and children who died in World War II, according to the New York Times. He arrived in the U.S. with his second wife in 1949, but the couple later split up and had no children. Blum's ex-wife died in 1992.In the U.S., he became a real estate developer and ultimately amassed a $40 million fortune. But he never wrote a will, and if no survivors can be found, that money will go to the state after three years, according to Forbes. Blum's accountant and friend Mason D. Corn told the Times that he finally got his friend to agree to sit down and make out a will about two weeks before he died, but a trip Corn had to take created an unfortunate delay. "I had to go away, and so he told me, 'OK, when you come back I will do it.' But by then it was too late. We came this close, but we missed the boat,” Corn told the Times.